Where are you today?
My mind needs to know
In what space you're existing
Who you may be meeting

Are you thinking of her?
Time to run through
Every single possible
Unpleasant scenario

It doesn't even matter
While you never think of me
My mind can't comprehend
Regardless of reality

Here comes the anger
Unnecessary, destructive
Solving absolutely nothing
And it comes just the same

I try to escape in sleep
But, wait, here you are
And here comes the pain
And you smile just the same.

I never asked for this
I never asked for you to
Waltz into my mind and
Never ever leave.

by Derek Walcott (1930- )

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

The tip of the brush tickles the canvas
As it traces the outline of the illustrious
Wings. Followed by spindly antennae that almost
protrude from the white plane.
Bulbous eyes appear, starting with
one spherical ommatidia after another.
Then, an appendage in the like of  
a purple passion vine twine stems from the head
of the envisioned creature.

The brush swooshes in the water
preparing for the most important
part of the masterpiece. Hues of blue begin
to form on a palette, one like the bright morning  
sky—that will breathe life into the painting—  
and another—the color of dusk—to add
the edge of reality.

Geometric shapes take form
in the wings for depth and texture,
like the odd shapes of rain drops on  
a window after it rains. And then the
final touches, speckles of white on the outer  
edges of the flying devices, faint
yet as noticeable as the petals of a dandelion
floating through the air.